Words of wisdom about the campaign finance fallout

BY BILL WONG

The Scandal Express out of Washington, D.C., has changed course, and it's rumbling toward Asian America once again. We thought we were safe when scandal-mongers were digging up dirt on President Clinton's alleged extramarital sexual escapades.

For more than a year before Monica Lewinsky became preturnaturally famous, a small cadre of Asian-surnamed individuals were virtually the full-time focus of Republican congressional and journalistic investigators, egged on by anti-Clintonites of the far-right persuasion.

Enter Monica, exit John Huang, Maria Hsia, Yah Lin Trie, and Johnny Chung.

Now they're back in the national media and congressional spotlight. The latest twist boils down to an incremental advance on a favorite post-Cold War scenario: China is spying on the United States through questionable Chinese American hustlers.

Chung, a Taiwan-born U.S. citizen and Los Angeles-based businessman, is alleged to have told federal investigators, as part of his plea bargain on campaign-related tax and fraud charges, he funneled nearly $100,000 from a Chinese military officer to Democratic causes in 1996. Then there have been stories about possible illegal satellite technology transfers to China from a U.S. satellite company whose chairman is a big Democratic contributor. The plot thickens.

Throughout the so-called "China connection" scandal, an underlying suspicion is that China is acting in sinister ways to get something from the United States (favorable trade policies, military technological secrets) and using compliant Chinese Americans to do it.

Who knows what the absolute truth about any of these explosive allegations, but it doesn't take an inordinately experienced nose to smell ... politics! Be that as it may, Chinese American voices have been remarkably muted in this on-again, off-again national scandal.

What better place to measure Chinese American sentiment on the scandal than the 8th annual conference of the Committee of 100 last weekend in California's world famous Silicon Valley?

The New York-based Committee of 100 is an exclusive membership-only organization (at $1,000-a-year dues) formed eight years ago by some prominent Chinese Americans after the infamous Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. The committee boasts its membership includes such luminaries as I.M. Pei, Yo Yo Ma, Chang-lin Tien, Amy Tan, Maya Lin, David Ho and Gary Locke.

The committee's major focus has been fostering better U.S.-China relations. Surely, committee members would have a thought or two about the political acid rain emanating from Washington.

Henry Tang, a New York investment banker and committee chairman, said, "Let's not forget. There are 10 million Asian Americans and four million Chinese Americans. What's being headlined now involves the activities of less than a dozen people. This shouldn't be the dynamics for broadbrushed tarring and feathering of 10 million people."

Kung-Lee Wang, a retired federal employee still active with the committee and other Chinese American groups, said the China-related Washington scandals "are being used by some politicians to make Chinese Americans feel less secure, make us feel less a part of the mainstream. They are putting a higher standard on Chinese Americans, and that is having a chilling effect on our political participation. If we want to get more involved in American politics, we have to think more carefully now so that our involvement won't come back to haunt us."

Michael Chang, the mayor of Cupertino in the heart of Silicon Valley, said the China-related scandal has raised the sensitive question of loyalty of Chinese Americans. This questioning, he said, "eats us up. There is no question we are Americans."

Chang said Jewish Americans who have a strong interest in Israel aren't questioned about their American loyalties. He said the Chinese American community needs to reach the same political status as Jewish Americans "by holding our own, having clout, getting our act together."

We are clearly not there yet. Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles, noted that while Asian Americans make up more than 10 percent of California's population, they make up only 2 to 3 percent of voters.

That gap needs to narrow considerably. Otherwise, politicians will continue to look on Asian Americans as a campaign cash cow, and look at the trouble some Asian-surnamed individuals got into when they thought money was an instant entry to a seat at the national political table.

Bill Wong is a San Francisco Bay Area-based writer and a regular contributor to AsianWeek.

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